Arizona loses more jobs than any other year

Arizona lost more jobs in the last 12 months than at any time in the state's history.

Dennis Doby, the state Department of Commerce's senior director of research administration, said that the state lost 155,400 jobs fromJanuary 2008 to January 2009.

While the absolute loss of jobs is a record, Doby said it is not the sharpest in terms of percentage. It translates to 5.9 percent fewer people working; Doby said the state saw 8 percent year-over-year losses in the 1940s.

The bottom line is that Arizona posted a 7.0 percent seasonally adjusted jobless rate for January. That is up four-tenths of a point from the revised figures for December; the unemployment rate in Arizona a year ago was 4.4 percent.

By comparison, the current national jobless rate in January was 7.6 percent, compared with 4.9 percent in January 2008.

No January unemployment figures are available for individual metro areas because the Department of Commerce is in the middle of the "benchmarking" process, revising its 2008 numbers to include additional sources of information.

The big losses continue to be in construction, which shed another 9,800 jobs in January. Employment in that sector now is 47,600 less than a year earlier.

Retail employment also declined. Doby said some of that is not a surprise this time of year.

"But the seasonal losses in January are being coupled with the cyclical losses related to the economic downturn and were higher than what we've seen on a 10-year average basis in practically every single industry," he said. The number of people working in retail alone in January was 31,000 less than the same time last year.

There also were big losses in the employment services sector, which includes agencies that provide temporary workers.

To put that loss of more than 155,000 jobs in perspective, Doby pointed out that the federal stimulus package just signed by the president holds out hope of only about 70,000 new jobs in Arizona.

"It only slows the rate of loss," he said of that federal aid. "It doesn't eliminate it."

He said it could have secondary benefits.

For example, Doby said, if banks get more money, that should increase the availability of loans. That could encourage more people to buy homes which, in turn, would stimulate the construction industry.

And Doby said the impact of tax breaks in the package will depend on whether people save the money or go out and spend it.

Ultimately, however, he said the bottom line to a better economy is what people believe.

Central to that is getting people to believe they are, in fact, going to be employed in the future and "end some of that uncertainty." That, he said, might convince them to finally replace that aging washer or dryer or get a new TV set.

"Spending will help get us out of this downturn," he said.